I feel like I'm beating a dead horse using these two as examples, but they really do show how a beautiful story can be told with video games. Especially if you are concerned with emotions being elicited by the game.
Granted, it also dawns on me that these two games may fall inline with what he means. Sure, they have a lead in story cinematic, but for the most part the entire contents of the game are removed from story elements.
As true as this is, people never seem to understand it. There is a very real reason why Nintendo will put Mario on almost anything they do. It helps things sell. Period.
Even in original ideas, some link to something before helps. Witness Shadow of the Collosus. Generally considered orginal. Never mentioned without Mentioning Ico.
The touch screen is written off as a gimmick because for most games it is a gimmick. There are a few that use it well, but for most games it is just an annoying gimmick.
Take Castlevania, for instance. Wonderful game, but the use of the touch screen was just intrusively stupid. Then there was Dr Driller (or whatever it was called). The touch screen was only usefull for the menus. Mario 64? The touch screen was horrid, unless you only wanted to play those little "side games".
So far, I know of 3 good games that use the DS features. Meteos, which ignores all of the buttons in favor of the touch screen. Nintendogs, which I will have to take on faith. And Kirby, which I enjoyed the demo of, but haven't played. Any others? Even Mario Kart DS ignores it.
Then you know just enough to be wrong. There may be some sort of tie in later on in the game, but from the first 10 hours I've put in, there is absolutely nothing to have required the older games to know what is going on.
This is not to say that there are not throw backs. You still have to save at churches and whatnot. They even have some of the original synthesized music. But it is not a sequel in the same way that most other mediums do sequels.
I would think the largest market turned off by the use of sequels would be new buyers. I would be willing to bet that the vast majority of people that see the VIII after the last Dragon Quest game will assume that it is an ongoing story and would be hard to just jump into at this point. With this in mind, and the fact that you can't get the earlier ones, I would not be surprised if many that would enjoy the game are skipping it.
It might be decent in single player, but it really falls apart in the coop setting. I don't know how many times an enemy would be hiding from my friend while looking straight at me. It was rather amusing, as there were times when I thought the character was simply on my team. It was only when I realized that he would step from behind the box to start firing at my friend (still ignoring me) that I realized it was an enemy.
I have to agree. My only complaint is that I would like to have a local backup copy of my email for the times when I'm not connected to the net. But as far as the ability to store in folders goes, labels really do get rid of the need for them. And the way it threads messages is awesome when it works.
So long as they were up front about it I don't see as this would be a concern. And, by upfront, I mean as soon as they can possibly alert you to the fact that they may not be able to fill an order, you should know.
If they quietly make a substitution or omision, on the other hand, that would probably turn me off of them, as well.
The only catch is that this is a trademark case. They could probably have kept everything the same, but not used the name Dewey Decimal System and been in the clear.
Really!?!?! this greatly changes my outlook on those. The 110 minutes was from a review, but I can not remember the source. I remember thinking that that was worthless.
Over 3 hours, eh? That pretty much puts this laptop back in contention for my future purchases. My only 2 real criteria are: 1. small. 2. long battery life.
They only thing I did not like about the x200 was the abysmal battery life. If I remember correctly, it was just at 110 minutes. That is just not long enough.:(
Judging from the press release, it wasn't completely clear to me that you would not be able to store it on a computer.
All the press release says is if you want to burn them. Now, I would fully expect a crippled DRM file for temp storage. In fact, I would expect this to use the expires bit that Microsoft was looking to create. This is why I said to copy it to DRM-free land of CDs.
So... Outside of the unlimited backup storage of a file, you have full use of it on your computer. The only time you would have to pay extra is if you want a permanent, non-expiring copy.
At least, I could see that being a somewhat acceptable solution. Now, is this what they had in mind? I can't tell from the press release.
Also note: I don't necessarily think this is a good solution. It just isn't as bad price wise as it was painted out to be.
There is only one major problem with this. This is assuming you want to burn all of the songs to a CD.
Now, I didn't look into it that much, but I am guessing you will be able to put it on anything (besides DRM-free CDs) without that purchase.
So... if you can live without a permanent copy, you are already saving at the 10 songs spot.
Is this better? Hell if I know. But to compare it to Apple's service straight up like that is a bit on the misleading side. This is more comparable to digital radio where you can take a small charge to keep a copy of a song.
In fact, it looks exactly like XM to me, but over the internet with on demand song listening and an option to "buy" a song.
Well, like I said, I am going off mostly what others have said about the systems. The popular contender to iTunes seems to be eMusic. So... I was going off of what I have heard about them.
That being said, I agree; if you have something where you have to pay to listen to a song now and in the future, there is a problem. However, eMusic does not seem to do this, leaving them completely out of either of the two "gotchas" you mentioned.
As per the no big labels statement... I was also under the impression that eMusic had a fairly wide selection of stuff. Is this not true? (I can not check while at work.)
All of this being said, I am not asking about the benefits of the services. I still just feel that this is doing well more because it comes from Apple than anything else. Sure it may be pretty good, but it is not as much better as they say it is. Other products, on a technical merit, seem plenty competitive.
Your "rental of music" comparison is severely flawed; from what I understand, eMusic allows you to download as much as you want, and does not have any DRM on it. So, if you ever stop paying the monthly fee, you just can not get new music. Now, I agree that having a 20 dollar fee per month is sorta "bad feeling", but as I understand it, they originally charged per song.
So...the only thing this seems to offer differently is the interface to it.
Still, I don't think the interface is why people haven't heard of alternatives. I still suspect that it is brand recognition. Pretty much everyone knows who Apple is.
In other words, I just don't see anything that makes this that much more compelling than anything else out there. I don't really feel that 99 cents is too much, but at the same time, I do feel it could go lower.
What I don't get, is that the way I buy CD's isn't hunting a single. If it was just the single that I liked, I would listen to it on the radio. Instead, I am hunting other songs that I will hopefully be interested in. SO, I realize that I am not the target for this. (Besides the fact that I can not afford a Mac (or a new pc, for that matter)).
How much of this success is due to this being a truly significant advance in implementations versus Apple simply having a heavy presence in the market?
I'm not trying to sideline the significance of the success, I'm just questioning why it is really successful. From what I have heard, this is not all that much different than approaches that others took earlier (Didn't eMusic, the popular word among those that don't like iTunes, originally sell per song?).
Alternatively still, maybe the market is just now ready for such a store model as this. Timing is, afterall, very important in delivery of a product to market. Too early can be as devastating as too late.
While much smaller in scope, Atlanta, GA is receiving something similar. The folks over at www.freebeeatlanta.com are setting up hotspots in a major area of Atlanta for free use. I am somewhat skeptical of their business model, though I have high hopes for it.
Their old site mentioned possibly rolling out in other cities, as well; unfortunately, the new site is less than informative.
I realize that this is definitely border lined (if not flat out) flaim bate, but....
So, we now like it when people integrate features? Effectively using a dominance in one sector (music players on the Mac) to gain dominance in another (online music purchase)?
I just fail to see how this is smiled upon. Sure it is nice, but what about the people that liked eMusic's setup? Would it not have been possible to create a "Web Services" dialect that could allow iTunes (or any other app) to communicate directly with any online music service?
To further clarify what I think the original user was getting at, and ask a question while I am at it...
In Media Player, if you use "protected" songs, you have access to them from that machine. The problem lies in the definition of that machine.
Windows primarily uses the CPU to identify the machine, so when you upgrade CPU's you now have a new machine which is not "authorized."
Sounds harmless enough; but this bit me once, as I did just what I outlined. Now, the only way to "unlock" the files from the old machine was by using the old machine. So... I had to put the old CPU back in. This was a bit of a pain, but at least possible. (Actually, I think I just deleted them all and re-ripped them, sans "protection.")
Now, what happens if you get a brand new machine and move backup copies of the songs to it? Since you no longer have the old machine at all, you can not "de-authorize" it. This is now eating up one of your authorized machines. What happens when this happens twice? Three times?
And if Apple lets you "de-authorize" a machine that you don't have access to, what sort of measures will they take to keep it secure for you?
Finally, can someone tell me what makes these protected files so much better then wma's? They seem to be about the same.
The only catch here is that my friends INSIST that all other browsers are slow on all platforms. Is Phoenix that much slower on the Mac? I don't know. But my friends insist that Safari is the fastest there is, period, no matter the platform. This leads me to think they haven't seen how fast some of the other browsers really are.
Like I said, I wasn't wanting to compare this to IE. I just wanted to know why this is the de facto browser now, in many people's eyes.
Should I be looking to give up Phoenix sometime soon because of how great this is? I ask because all of my mac friends really make it sound like I don't know what I am talking about when I say a page loads fast.
Quicktime has always sucked on the PC, yes. But I don't go claiming that it is the worst thing since bad things. I simply say that it sucks on Windows. The difference is that Mac fans say that IE (and all other browsers) suck everywhere.
I guess I can see that. But I wasn't trying to compare it with just IE. Phoenix, once you tell it not to pause for a brief moment at the beginning, is quite speedy. And that is on my old laptop.
As per the cache, I always assumed that was partly the fault of the website. I've seen some where when I hit the back, it clearly does not need to reparse the page. So... I figured that the pages where this happens is on pages that have the expires headers set to a time that allows the browser to know not to reparse. (On pages like slashdot, this would not be desired, as you would miss updates.)
So... if you want that ability, shouldn't you be using either tabs or new windows? (Which, again, are a toss up to me.)
At any rate, to get back on the speed issue... most sites are done rendering (using IE) in about the amount of time it takes me to blink. In others words, pretty fast. I haven't waited on a page to load due to the browser being slow in a long time. (Every now and then my laptop has trouble, but I just credit that to going over the 802.11 network and, of course, it being an old laptop.)
What is it that makes this browser so much better then the others?
I have some friends now that recently switched to the apple side of computing, and I can't help but laugh at them on some of the stuff they applaud Apple for. This browser is one of them.
They claim it is faster, but I just don't see how that is possible. The bottleneck in most all browsing I do is the network. Have they simply found a way to make it seem faster? Have other browsers on the Mac been slow in the past? I don't get it.
As a reference. I use IE at work, and Phoenix (or should that be the browser formerly known as Phoenix) at home. While I do appreciate some of the benefits of Phoenix over IE, I honestly think it is a toss up between them.
I think most of my problems nowdays are with sites that are just ugly. However, I can't tell the difference -- or maybe I just don't care -- between the way any browsers handle fonts and whatnot. I also can't notice most of the differences between how sites render. I do appreciate the fact that most sites appear stable in all browsers now.
I know a lot of people were put off by the first few episodes not being that great. Personally, I liked the entire series, I was just not around much while it was on. I just can't understand why they would put it on during a Friday night.
Can someone explain the demographic they are shooting for with that time-slot?
Slashdot Mirror
I feel like I'm beating a dead horse using these two as examples, but they really do show how a beautiful story can be told with video games. Especially if you are concerned with emotions being elicited by the game.
Granted, it also dawns on me that these two games may fall inline with what he means. Sure, they have a lead in story cinematic, but for the most part the entire contents of the game are removed from story elements.
As true as this is, people never seem to understand it. There is a very real reason why Nintendo will put Mario on almost anything they do. It helps things sell. Period.
Even in original ideas, some link to something before helps. Witness Shadow of the Collosus. Generally considered orginal. Never mentioned without Mentioning Ico.
The touch screen is written off as a gimmick because for most games it is a gimmick. There are a few that use it well, but for most games it is just an annoying gimmick.
Take Castlevania, for instance. Wonderful game, but the use of the touch screen was just intrusively stupid. Then there was Dr Driller (or whatever it was called). The touch screen was only usefull for the menus. Mario 64? The touch screen was horrid, unless you only wanted to play those little "side games".
So far, I know of 3 good games that use the DS features. Meteos, which ignores all of the buttons in favor of the touch screen. Nintendogs, which I will have to take on faith. And Kirby, which I enjoyed the demo of, but haven't played. Any others? Even Mario Kart DS ignores it.
Then you know just enough to be wrong. There may be some sort of tie in later on in the game, but from the first 10 hours I've put in, there is absolutely nothing to have required the older games to know what is going on.
This is not to say that there are not throw backs. You still have to save at churches and whatnot. They even have some of the original synthesized music. But it is not a sequel in the same way that most other mediums do sequels.
I would think the largest market turned off by the use of sequels would be new buyers. I would be willing to bet that the vast majority of people that see the VIII after the last Dragon Quest game will assume that it is an ongoing story and would be hard to just jump into at this point. With this in mind, and the fact that you can't get the earlier ones, I would not be surprised if many that would enjoy the game are skipping it.
It might be decent in single player, but it really falls apart in the coop setting. I don't know how many times an enemy would be hiding from my friend while looking straight at me. It was rather amusing, as there were times when I thought the character was simply on my team. It was only when I realized that he would step from behind the box to start firing at my friend (still ignoring me) that I realized it was an enemy.
Are there any plans for a new collection of your works?
I have to agree. My only complaint is that I would like to have a local backup copy of my email for the times when I'm not connected to the net. But as far as the ability to store in folders goes, labels really do get rid of the need for them. And the way it threads messages is awesome when it works.
So long as they were up front about it I don't see as this would be a concern. And, by upfront, I mean as soon as they can possibly alert you to the fact that they may not be able to fill an order, you should know.
If they quietly make a substitution or omision, on the other hand, that would probably turn me off of them, as well.
That isn't a sequel, actually. Instead, it takes place in an "alternate" timeline where there was no puppet master. (So I've been told.)
The sequel, Innocence, is due to come out sometime soon. The art looks amazing, from what I've seen. And it is a movie.
The only catch is that this is a trademark case. They could probably have kept everything the same, but not used the name Dewey Decimal System and been in the clear.
Really!?!?! this greatly changes my outlook on those. The 110 minutes was from a review, but I can not remember the source. I remember thinking that that was worthless.
Over 3 hours, eh? That pretty much puts this laptop back in contention for my future purchases. My only 2 real criteria are: 1. small. 2. long battery life.
They only thing I did not like about the x200 was the abysmal battery life. If I remember correctly, it was just at 110 minutes. That is just not long enough. :(
The new centrino offerings look nice, though.
Except I covered most of those points.
Judging from the press release, it wasn't completely clear to me that you would not be able to store it on a computer.
All the press release says is if you want to burn them. Now, I would fully expect a crippled DRM file for temp storage. In fact, I would expect this to use the expires bit that Microsoft was looking to create. This is why I said to copy it to DRM-free land of CDs.
So... Outside of the unlimited backup storage of a file, you have full use of it on your computer. The only time you would have to pay extra is if you want a permanent, non-expiring copy.
At least, I could see that being a somewhat acceptable solution. Now, is this what they had in mind? I can't tell from the press release.
Also note: I don't necessarily think this is a good solution. It just isn't as bad price wise as it was painted out to be.
There is only one major problem with this. This is assuming you want to burn all of the songs to a CD.
Now, I didn't look into it that much, but I am guessing you will be able to put it on anything (besides DRM-free CDs) without that purchase.
So... if you can live without a permanent copy, you are already saving at the 10 songs spot.
Is this better? Hell if I know. But to compare it to Apple's service straight up like that is a bit on the misleading side. This is more comparable to digital radio where you can take a small charge to keep a copy of a song.
In fact, it looks exactly like XM to me, but over the internet with on demand song listening and an option to "buy" a song.
Well, like I said, I am going off mostly what others have said about the systems. The popular contender to iTunes seems to be eMusic. So... I was going off of what I have heard about them.
That being said, I agree; if you have something where you have to pay to listen to a song now and in the future, there is a problem. However, eMusic does not seem to do this, leaving them completely out of either of the two "gotchas" you mentioned.
As per the no big labels statement... I was also under the impression that eMusic had a fairly wide selection of stuff. Is this not true? (I can not check while at work.)
All of this being said, I am not asking about the benefits of the services. I still just feel that this is doing well more because it comes from Apple than anything else. Sure it may be pretty good, but it is not as much better as they say it is. Other products, on a technical merit, seem plenty competitive.
Your "rental of music" comparison is severely flawed; from what I understand, eMusic allows you to download as much as you want, and does not have any DRM on it. So, if you ever stop paying the monthly fee, you just can not get new music. Now, I agree that having a 20 dollar fee per month is sorta "bad feeling", but as I understand it, they originally charged per song.
So...the only thing this seems to offer differently is the interface to it.
Still, I don't think the interface is why people haven't heard of alternatives. I still suspect that it is brand recognition. Pretty much everyone knows who Apple is.
In other words, I just don't see anything that makes this that much more compelling than anything else out there. I don't really feel that 99 cents is too much, but at the same time, I do feel it could go lower.
What I don't get, is that the way I buy CD's isn't hunting a single. If it was just the single that I liked, I would listen to it on the radio. Instead, I am hunting other songs that I will hopefully be interested in. SO, I realize that I am not the target for this. (Besides the fact that I can not afford a Mac (or a new pc, for that matter)).
How much of this success is due to this being a truly significant advance in implementations versus Apple simply having a heavy presence in the market?
I'm not trying to sideline the significance of the success, I'm just questioning why it is really successful. From what I have heard, this is not all that much different than approaches that others took earlier (Didn't eMusic, the popular word among those that don't like iTunes, originally sell per song?).
Alternatively still, maybe the market is just now ready for such a store model as this. Timing is, afterall, very important in delivery of a product to market. Too early can be as devastating as too late.
While much smaller in scope, Atlanta, GA is receiving something similar. The folks over at www.freebeeatlanta.com are setting up hotspots in a major area of Atlanta for free use. I am somewhat skeptical of their business model, though I have high hopes for it.
Their old site mentioned possibly rolling out in other cities, as well; unfortunately, the new site is less than informative.
I realize that this is definitely border lined (if not flat out) flaim bate, but....
So, we now like it when people integrate features? Effectively using a dominance in one sector (music players on the Mac) to gain dominance in another (online music purchase)?
I just fail to see how this is smiled upon. Sure it is nice, but what about the people that liked eMusic's setup? Would it not have been possible to create a "Web Services" dialect that could allow iTunes (or any other app) to communicate directly with any online music service?
To further clarify what I think the original user was getting at, and ask a question while I am at it...
In Media Player, if you use "protected" songs, you have access to them from that machine. The problem lies in the definition of that machine.
Windows primarily uses the CPU to identify the machine, so when you upgrade CPU's you now have a new machine which is not "authorized."
Sounds harmless enough; but this bit me once, as I did just what I outlined. Now, the only way to "unlock" the files from the old machine was by using the old machine. So... I had to put the old CPU back in. This was a bit of a pain, but at least possible. (Actually, I think I just deleted them all and re-ripped them, sans "protection.")
Now, what happens if you get a brand new machine and move backup copies of the songs to it? Since you no longer have the old machine at all, you can not "de-authorize" it. This is now eating up one of your authorized machines. What happens when this happens twice? Three times?
And if Apple lets you "de-authorize" a machine that you don't have access to, what sort of measures will they take to keep it secure for you?
Finally, can someone tell me what makes these protected files so much better then wma's? They seem to be about the same.
The only catch here is that my friends INSIST that all other browsers are slow on all platforms. Is Phoenix that much slower on the Mac? I don't know. But my friends insist that Safari is the fastest there is, period, no matter the platform. This leads me to think they haven't seen how fast some of the other browsers really are.
Like I said, I wasn't wanting to compare this to IE. I just wanted to know why this is the de facto browser now, in many people's eyes.
Should I be looking to give up Phoenix sometime soon because of how great this is? I ask because all of my mac friends really make it sound like I don't know what I am talking about when I say a page loads fast.
Quicktime has always sucked on the PC, yes. But I don't go claiming that it is the worst thing since bad things. I simply say that it sucks on Windows. The difference is that Mac fans say that IE (and all other browsers) suck everywhere.
I guess I can see that. But I wasn't trying to compare it with just IE. Phoenix, once you tell it not to pause for a brief moment at the beginning, is quite speedy. And that is on my old laptop.
As per the cache, I always assumed that was partly the fault of the website. I've seen some where when I hit the back, it clearly does not need to reparse the page. So... I figured that the pages where this happens is on pages that have the expires headers set to a time that allows the browser to know not to reparse. (On pages like slashdot, this would not be desired, as you would miss updates.)
So... if you want that ability, shouldn't you be using either tabs or new windows? (Which, again, are a toss up to me.)
At any rate, to get back on the speed issue... most sites are done rendering (using IE) in about the amount of time it takes me to blink. In others words, pretty fast. I haven't waited on a page to load due to the browser being slow in a long time. (Every now and then my laptop has trouble, but I just credit that to going over the 802.11 network and, of course, it being an old laptop.)
What is it that makes this browser so much better then the others?
I have some friends now that recently switched to the apple side of computing, and I can't help but laugh at them on some of the stuff they applaud Apple for. This browser is one of them.
They claim it is faster, but I just don't see how that is possible. The bottleneck in most all browsing I do is the network. Have they simply found a way to make it seem faster? Have other browsers on the Mac been slow in the past? I don't get it.
As a reference. I use IE at work, and Phoenix (or should that be the browser formerly known as Phoenix) at home. While I do appreciate some of the benefits of Phoenix over IE, I honestly think it is a toss up between them.
I think most of my problems nowdays are with sites that are just ugly. However, I can't tell the difference -- or maybe I just don't care -- between the way any browsers handle fonts and whatnot. I also can't notice most of the differences between how sites render. I do appreciate the fact that most sites appear stable in all browsers now.
So... what is so great about Safari?
I know a lot of people were put off by the first few episodes not being that great. Personally, I liked the entire series, I was just not around much while it was on. I just can't understand why they would put it on during a Friday night.
Can someone explain the demographic they are shooting for with that time-slot?